


Bleeding Love

by mycanonnevercame



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Fix-It, Frank takes care of Karen, Karen POV, Mentions of canon-typical violence, Oops, Pining, Sharing a Bed, Single POV, Slow Burn, WHERE WAS FRANK, asking for a friend, because duh, because season 3 made NO SENSE, did i mention the pining, glossing over canon details because i don’t remember 90 percent of season 3, i blame the fandom over on tumblr dot com talking about soulmate aus all the time, is it still hurt/comfort if no one is physically injured?, its me, karen page is angry, oh here he is, oh one very brief fight scene, ok here we go, or as slow burn as i get, playing fast and loose with canon, pretty oblique though, this is the hill i die on yall, uhhhh what else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:46:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21728506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mycanonnevercame/pseuds/mycanonnevercame
Summary: She doesn’t know, the first time they meet. Doesn’t realize who he is. There’s a feeling in the air, a tension she puts down to the gravity of the situation. They’re about to meet a mass murderer. But there’s more to him than what the media is saying, she’s sure of it. She has her own reasons for believing that, and the idea that he’s her soulmate isn’t one of them.
Relationships: Frank Castle/Karen Page
Comments: 32
Kudos: 172





	Bleeding Love

**Author's Note:**

> Just want to say a very heartfelt thank you to @bottledbliss and georgiagrl1990 over on tumblr for the beta read, really appreciate the feedback, loves!
> 
> Fic title from the song by Leona Lewis, Bleeding Love - “I don’t care what they say, I’m in love with you, they try to pull me away, but they don’t know the truth, my heart’s crippled by the vein that I keep on closing, you cut me open and I keep bleeding, I keep, keep bleeding love”
> 
> Hard to get more Kastle than that, folks.

It’s different for everyone, meeting your soulmate.

Always a dream, but they can be hard to interpret, depending on what you see. If you’re lucky, the meaning becomes clear as soon as you meet them.

Karen has had the same dream every night for her entire life: a blazing white skull, grinning at her in the darkness. She described it to her mother once, and was surprised that it frightened her — it had never frightened Karen.

It always made her feel safe.

She doesn’t know, the first time they meet. Doesn’t realize who he is.

Oh, she knows his name. _Frank Castle, former Marine, father and husband, terror of Hell’s Kitchen_. Knows some of his history, has already broken into his house. Listens as they’re told the rules for speaking with him.

 _Don’t give him anything. Don’t take anything from him. Don’t cross the red line._

Well, she acts like she’s listening. She isn’t really. There’s a feeling in the air, a tension she puts down to the gravity of the situation. They’re about to meet a mass murderer. But there’s more to him than what the media is saying, she’s sure of it. She has her own reasons for believing that, and the idea that he’s her soulmate isn’t one of them.

Something ripples in the air when they walk into the room, when dark eyes rimmed in darker bruises meet hers, something that makes her drop Matt’s hand as though burned — but even then, she doesn’t know.

Not when she yells at him, and he listens. Not when he asks her to stay, and she does. Not in all the hours they spend going over his case, or looking for answers about his family, when he’ll only talk to her. Not when he loses it on the stand, or covers her body with his own while bullets fly above them, or when they sit in a diner while he uses her as bait.

No, it doesn’t even occur to her until she thinks it’s too late. It’s only when she thinks he might be dead, blown up on a ship full of drugs, that she begins to understand what it is she feels when she’s around him. That gravity he has that no one else seems to feel, pulling on her like a moon pulls the tide. It’s why she can’t leave the docks while they’re still finding bodies, why she stays through the night, exhausted and heartsick, freezing her ass off in the early autumn night.

They don’t find him.

When he looks down at her from the roof, the white skull she’s seen only in her dreams emblazoned across his chest — that’s when she finally knows for sure. She hadn’t realized the dream would be so literal.

She wonders if he knows, too. If he’s put a name to the connection they share. If he’s dreamt about her.

She doesn’t think he has.

The dreams don’t stop. She always figured they would, once she found their source, but they don’t. They just change.

Now, she sees his face over the skull on his chest, implacable and terrible.

It still makes her feel safe.

It’s a year before she sees him again, and when she recognizes him under the hat and beard and hobo blanket, she doesn’t know how to react.

 _Asshole_ , she thinks, and, _I missed him_.

“Can we talk?”

She doesn’t have it in her to say no. He fills up her apartment with his presence, though he doesn’t take up much space and he very obviously doesn’t want to impose, for all that he’s asking for a favor.

It’s the flowers that do it.

It’s not a burner phone with one number on it. Not an impersonal email address.

Flowers.

How did he know white roses are her favorite?

When he moves to leave, she’s up and across the room before either of them are ready for it. She doesn’t think many people can get inside his guard like this.

She breathes him in, feels him slowly relax into her embrace and return it, one hand to her two. Feels his nose nudge into the crook of her shoulder, and he’s breathing her in, too. He smells the same, like hard work and cheap soap and warfare.

She’s surprised how much it hurts when he leaves.

They slip right back into their old rhythms, dancing around one another. She doesn’t go easy on him, and he doesn’t underestimate her. They push each other, argue and yell, and she maybe says too much.

She’s almost expecting it when he pushes her away, cutting her cleanly out of what little of his life she’d been allowed, a soft kiss on her cheek the only goodbye she gets. He still doesn’t have any idea, she’s sure of it, and she wonders if he’ll ever know. Maybe he’s Karen’s soulmate, but Maria was his. Maybe his grief and loss and anger are drowning out anything that might be left for her. Maybe they always will.

She couldn’t really blame him, not for that, no matter how much she aches for him.

She’s not surprised when he shows up at the hotel, not really. He told her to stay out of it, and she ignored him, so here they are.

After, she remembers the day in flashes, fits and starts of memories.

Staring down the barrel of a gun, only to have Frank throw himself in between her and the bullets that would have killed her.

The stark terror and determination in his eyes. “I will come for you.”

And he does, fresh blood streaming down his neck from a wound on his head that wasn’t there before. He tells her how to disarm the bomb with his eyes and a few well-placed words, and in the aftermath of the explosion, he reaches for her.

The look in his eyes when she makes him hold her hostage, even with an empty gun, breaks her heart, but she forces the issue. “They will shoot you,” she says. “Please don’t make me let them.”

They find peace in the elevator, if only for a moment, his forehead warm against hers and his breath whispering over her lips.

He might know, then.

She panics, tells him to go before he can see the knowledge in her eyes. He shouldn’t linger, anyway — the building is swarming with cops, all dying for a chance to bring down the Punisher.

She cannot let that happen.

Brett doesn’t really know what to do with her. She tells him her side, makes sure he knows that Frank was actively trying to thwart the bomber. When she’s finished giving her statement, he sits quietly with her for a few minutes. He looks almost as exhausted as she feels.

“Have you found your soulmate, Brett?” She asks abruptly.

He looks up in surprise. Shakes his head. “Not yet.” She nods, frowning down at her hands.

“Have you?” He asks, and she nods again.

“Yeah.”

“What’s it like?” He wants to know.

“It’s not what I expected,” she says after a moment, and starts to laugh at the absurdity of the understatement. She laughs so hard she cries, and then she can’t stop crying. She freaks Brett out, and he calls a medic because he thinks she’s in shock.

She hears about the carousel — it’s her job to hear about the carousel — and she waits, after. Waits for him to come back to her.

He doesn’t.

She tries to move on.

What a ridiculous notion, moving on from your soulmate. But she does try. He’s gone, it’s been six months, he doesn’t want her, and she has her own life to live, and Wilson Fisk to take down again.

That goes about as well as you’d expect.

After the massacre at the Bulletin, after Ellison fires her, she pulls herself together, goes home to her empty, lonely apartment. There’s a dark figure waiting by her door, and for a moment she thinks it’s one of Fisk’s men, here to finish the job the fake Daredevil has started. She shoves her hand into her bag, digging half-heartedly for her gun, but the figure turns toward her and she relaxes because she’d know his broad shoulders and predatory grace anywhere.

“I came as soon as I heard,” he says, voice a low growl, and oh _god_ she’s missed him, but she’s furious with him, too, for disappearing again.

It takes her a long moment to respond. “Where have you been?” She doesn’t look at him while she waits for his reply, instead moving to open her door. They shouldn’t have this conversation in the hallway.

“Around,” he says, and she rolls her eyes.

She leaves the door open behind her, gets all the way into her living room before she realizes he isn’t following her. She looks back over her shoulder at him, hovering in the doorway.

“Are you not staying?” She asks, hating that her voice cracks on the question — hating that she has to ask it at all.

He mumbles a reply — she has no idea what, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s easing through the door and shutting it quietly behind him. He turns the lock without being asked, and slowly moves down the hall toward her, his movements careful like he’s afraid she’ll bolt.

He stops in front of her, close enough to touch, and then his hands are on her. Her eyes close at the contact, and she almost cries from how good it feels. She can’t remember the last time someone touched her like this — with gentleness and affection. It takes her a moment to realize he’s checking her for injuries, calloused hands skimming over her. He touches her chin and she opens her eyes as he tilts her head to the light to check for a concussion.

“I’m not hurt,” she says, dropping her bag at her feet and peeling out of her coat.

“Yeah, you are,” he says, because he always sees right through her. Tears prick her eyes as he starts to step back, to let go, and she can’t bear it. She throws her arms around him, practically tackling him just like the last time he was in her apartment, only this time he doesn’t hesitate to wrap both arms around her and hold on tight.

“Shh, shh, shh,” he says as she cries, one hand rubbing circles into her neck under her hair. He pulls her closer with his other arm, presses his lips to her hair. “I’ve got you.”

He doesn’t press her for details. He lets her cry herself out in his arms, pours her a glass of wine and sends her off to get a shower. “You’ll feel better,” he says.

When she comes back to the kitchen forty minutes later, skin pink from the hot water, wrapped in her most comfortable clothes and feeling like a new person, it’s to the sight of Frank with his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, stirring something in a pot on her stove. The entire room smells amazing, dimly lit by the stove light and the lamp by the couch, and she takes a moment to study Frank from her spot in the doorway.

He’s taken off his beanie and jacket, and he looks good. Healthy, no bruises on his face or knuckles. All of his visible scars are long-healed. His hair is longer than the last time she saw him, long enough to curl over his collar and around his ears, and he’s in his sock feet. She sighs, because he looks so homey, like he belongs there in her kitchen, and it’s going to hurt when he disappears again.

“Hey,” he says, looking up.

“Hey.” She pushes off the doorway, comes to stand next to him and look at what he’s got cooking. “Soup?”

“Yeah, uh, chicken noodle,” he says. “Hope you don’t mind, I raided your cupboards.”

“If this is the result, you can raid my cupboards anytime,” she quips, hiding her very real wish that he would come around more behind humor. He takes her seriously anyway.

“Okay,” he says softly, nodding.

After dinner, Karen curls up in the middle of the couch, letting Frank decide whether to sit beside her or take the armchair.

He sits beside her.

She gets him to tell her what he’s been up to for the last six months instead of talking about the massacre. She’s not ready to go there yet. He tells her the full story behind why he was at the hotel, what happened at the carousel, and his new identity from DHS. She’d filled in a lot of the details on her own, but there were still gaps in her knowledge.

He hasn’t been punishing. He works in construction and has a tiny apartment in Brooklyn.

It’s like a knife in her heart.

“You’ve been in New York this whole time?” She says, and he won’t meet her eyes.

“Yeah... didn’t think you’d want me around,” he mumbles, and she’s angry all over again.

“You could have asked me.”

He looks at her then, but now she’s the one avoiding his gaze.

“I’m going to bed,” she says abruptly, standing up so fast she gets dizzy. She sways a little on her feet, but Frank is already there, steadying her.

“You want me to go?” He asks, and she looks at him in surprise — she didn’t expect him to even ask, just to go. He’s always going. He’s frowning, waiting for her verdict, and as mad as she is at him — she doesn’t want him to leave.

“No,” she says. “I want you to stop leaving.”

It’s probably too much — she’s always saying too much — but she can only hold back for so long. He doesn’t even look surprised, and she wonders again if he knows. She won’t ask, though, not tonight.

He follows her to the bedroom, and they prepare for bed like they do this every night. She goes to the bathroom and changes into an oversized T-shirt that brushes the tops of her bare thighs. When she comes back to the bedroom, Frank has taken off his socks and jeans. He pauses in the act of taking off his shirt when she comes back into the room.

“Go ahead,” she says. He strips it off and now he’s standing there in just his boxer-briefs, and — maybe this was a mistake. He’s gorgeous, all corded muscle and tawny skin, and Karen can feel herself flushing.

Shit.

She climbs into bed before she can lose her nerve, and Frank mumbles something about being right back and goes into the living room. Karen takes a few deep breaths while he’s gone. He comes back a few moments later with a Glock in his hand, and she smiles. He checks the clip, ignores every gun safety rule she’s ever heard and chambers a round, then sets it carefully on the bedside table.

He gives her a look when he catches her smiling. “You know, most women wouldn’t look so pleased that a man brought a gun to bed,” he grumbles as he climbs in beside her, but she catches the wicked smirk in the corner of his mouth before he can hide it.

“I’m not most women,” she says, turning out the light.

“Don’t I know it,” Frank mutters.

She can’t sleep.

She can’t shut her mind off, can’t stop thinking about the massacre, about Ellison’s face when he realized she knows who Daredevil is, about the man lying quietly beside her. She doesn’t know if Frank is asleep or just able to somehow lie still in spite of the situation.

She rolls over for the third time in five minutes.

“Jesus, woman, hold still,” Frank grumbles sleepily.

She sighs. “Sorry. I can’t relax.”

She feels him shift behind her. He scoops an arm around her waist and pulls her back against him, and if she’d thought it felt good to be touched by him before — that was nothing compared to this. He sighs contentedly into her hair, and even though a tiny masochistic part of her wonders if he’s imagining she’s his dead wife, she can still feel the tension bleeding out of her.

“This okay?” He mumbles, and she can feel his lips brushing the back of her neck. In answer, she snuggles back into him, closing the last of the distance between them.

She wakes up when it’s still dark out, and it takes her a moment to realize what disturbed her — Frank has gone utterly still. His arms tighten around her, telling her to stay quiet.

“There’s someone breaking in,” he breathes in her ear, barely audible. “Stay here.” He starts to pull away, and she grabs his arm.

“ _Fuck_ , no,” Karen hisses, turning to glare at him. “We go together.”

She expects him to argue, but he doesn’t — if anything, he looks a little turned on.

Well. That’s something to figure out later. His gaze drops to her lips, but then he slides over to the edge of the bed and quietly climbs out, reaching for his gun where he left it on the bedside table earlier that night. She does the same, slipping silently out of bed and grabbing her .380 from her nightstand. It’s loaded, but she leaves the chamber empty and the safety on, for now. If she was alone, that would be one thing, but the last thing she wants to do is shoot Frank by accident.

She lets Frank take the lead out of the room — she can handle herself, but she has no illusions about who has more tactical experience here. He pauses before they leave the room and wraps an arm around her waist, pulling her close.

“Be careful, and stay behind me, yeah?” He whispers in her ear. “And for fuck’s sake, don’t get shot.” He kisses her temple as he lets her go.

They’re going to have to actually talk about some things at some point.

For now, Karen focuses on following Frank as quietly as possible, their bare feet padding silently across the hardwood floors of her apartment. He stops at the door to the kitchen and looks back at her once to make sure she’s ready. His eyes look black in the dim ambient light coming through her windows. She nods once, so he opens the door.

It’s much darker in the main room, and Karen pauses in the doorway to let her eyes adjust. Frank moves ahead of her, and there’s the sound of a scuffle — the slap of flesh hitting flesh, the clatter of Frank’s gun falling to the floor, the muffled _oof_ of someone getting the air knocked out of them.

“Christ, Red, what are you doing here?” Frank grinds out, grunting as he trades blows with the intruder. The sounds of combat come to an abrupt halt.

“Frank?” It’s Matt’s voice. “I thought— what are _you_ doing here?”

“I asked you first.”

“What the hell?” Karen says, moving over to flip the light switch. The kitchen light comes on, and both Frank and Karen wince at the sudden brightness. Matt, of course, doesn’t react. He’s dressed in his old Man in Black getup, from the early days of his vigilantism. “You broke into my apartment?”

“I needed to see you,” he explains. “I wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“At three in the morning?” She snaps, checking the clock on her coffee pot.

“I thought you had an intruder!” He protests. There’s a pause as he seems to realize that doesn’t explain why he was coming to see her in the middle of the night. “I didn’t realize you have, uh... company.” He keeps his tone neutral, but Karen is already cranky from being awakened in the middle of the damn night.

“You should have called,” she snaps. Frank calmly scoops his gun up from where it landed under her couch and comes to stand next to her in the kitchen. He leans back against the counter and checks his weapon, ejecting the magazine and clearing the chamber with the ease and familiarity of long practice. He’s close enough that when he cocks one leg, his knee brushes her leg.

“I’m dead, remember? No phone,” Matt says.

“This is not the time to be a sarcastic asshole. You owe me three months of rent.”

He opens his mouth on a retort, but apparently his long-missing sense of self-preservation kicks in, and he shuts his mouth again.

“Just tell me what you want,” Karen says.

Matt talks for a few minutes, explaining some of what he knows and leaving all sorts of crumbs for her to latch onto, and she should probably be writing some of it down but she’s so fed up with him right now that she can barely listen.

“What do you say, are you going to help me?” He finishes, and she thinks about it, she really does for a solid second, but his tone says he assumes she’s going to say yes and she’s _so pissed_. All she can think about is how she worried for so long about Matt and he never worried about her or Foggy at all.

“No,” she says.

“Karen—“ Matt starts, taking a step forward, but Frank speaks up for the first time.

“You heard her, Murdock,” he says, straightening up. He doesn’t raise his voice, but Matt flinches slightly. Frank’s shoulder brushes hers, a tacit sign of support. Matt hesitates for a moment, but then he nods and slips out the fire escape.

“Knock on the damn door, next time,” she calls after him.

It’s quiet in her kitchen for a long time after Matt leaves, both of them waiting by unspoken agreement for him to be out of hearing.

“You’re going to help him, aren’t you,” Frank says eventually. It’s not really a question.

“Yeah,” Karen says on a sigh. “That’s a solid lead he just gave me. I’ll do some digging and... I don’t know, it’s not like I can write about it anymore. Maybe I’ll just take whatever I find to Mahoney.” She chews on her lip, thinking through her options. “I was so angry at him for being dead,” she says abruptly. “I was _furious_. And now he’s not dead, and I feel like I should be happy, you know? But I’m just angrier.”

“That the same reason why you’re so mad at me?” Frank says.

“Yes and no...” she says. “I’m mad at you for a lot of reasons. But at least you never lied to me. You only let me think you were dead the one time, and not even for an entire day. The rest of the time... you were just gone.” She doesn’t go on — she can hardly tell him that she’s mad at him for being her soulmate. It’s not like he chose it, anyway, any more than she did.

Plus she’d have to actually _tell him_ , and it’s not knowledge she wants to burden him with, not if he doesn’t already know. And he doesn’t, she’s fairly certain. He would’ve said something by now, right? He wouldn’t lie to her about this, even by omission.

“Karen...” he starts, moving closer. “It wasn’t— it’s not that I don’t want to be here. With you.”

She looks up at that. “Then why stay away? I looked for you every day, Frank. In the news, on street corners. I called Madani once a week. If we both wanted you here, then where were you?” Too much, she’s said too much _again_ , but she can’t bring herself to regret it right now.

“God, Karen. You shouldn’t want me here.”

“You don’t get to tell me what I should and should not want,” she says, suddenly exhausted. “I’m so sick of the men in my life telling me what to do and who to want and how to be.”

It’s silent for a few minutes. She can sense Frank is working himself up to ask something. Something big. He doesn’t disappoint.

“Why _do_ you want me here?” He won’t look at her, which is just as well — she’s about to tell a half-truth.

“I’ve told you already, Frank,” she says. “I’ve been telling you for years. I care about you.” He looks up at that, just for a moment, glances away again. “I care what happens to you. I like you, even when you’re an asshole.”

That last gets a chuckle out of him, but he sobers quickly. “I care about you, too, Karen,” he says, the admission grinding out of him.

“Got a funny way of showing it,” she mutters, and he laughs again.

He’s there for the rest of it. Helps her chase leads, keeps Matt from going completely off the deep end. Stays with her until her apartment gets too hot, lets her use his place as a safe house, all the while making sure she eats better and sleeps enough and somehow gets her to start running with him even though Karen has always despised exercising. Wraps her in his arms every night and holds her together. She’s never had anyone try so hard for her before, never had anyone take care of her like this, not since her mother died.

She doesn’t dream about him when he’s there.

Fisk ends up back in prison, Poindexter is paralyzed, Matt is easing back into his life again, patching things up with her and Foggy — they’ll never be the same, not for her part, but she’s glad he and Foggy are friends again. The world never seemed right without the avocados. They resurrect the law practice, make her a full partner, and she thinks it might actually work out this time.

Frank stops staying over, though he doesn’t disappear entirely, and his absence is like a splinter of glass under her skin, a sharp and unrelenting source of pain. She’s certain, now, that she’s not his soulmate, that she’s destined to live in this one-sided love forever. She can’t decide if it would be better or worse if he went away, if she never saw him again. The dreams come back, that skull a glowing white plague on her heart — she’ll never be free of him, even if she wanted to be.

She doesn’t want to be.

Matt brings it up one day, cornering her in her tiny office while Foggy is off at a deposition.

“Karen, are you you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she lies, even though she knows it’s pointless. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s just that you’ve been really unhappy, lately,” he says, frowning down at his hands where they grip his cane. “I noticed... I was wondering...” He pauses for a moment, searching for words, an unusual thing to witness on Matt Murdock. “Does it have to do with Frank?” He finally asks, far more bluntly than she ever would have expected.

Somehow, she finds herself telling him the truth. “Yes.” She doesn’t elaborate, but she doesn’t shut down the conversation either, content to let Matt ask what he wants. It’s the first time since his return from the dead that they’ve had a real conversation, talked about something deeper than work or polite pleasantries.

“You and Frank, you’ve always had this... connection,” he says, and Karen laughs hollowly. Is she really that transparent? He’s not the first person to use that word about her and Frank — Dinah Madani had said the same thing.

Her laughter turns into a sigh. “Yeah... you noticed that, huh?”

“He’s your soulmate.” It’s not a question, but she nods anyway. Murmurs an affirmative out loud, still unsure how much Matt can perceive. “Does he know?”

“I don’t think so,” she says. “We haven’t talked about it, but... no, I don’t think he knows.”

“Are you sure? How can he not? You’ve known each other for years, now.” Matt seems patently disbelieving of her assessment, in a way that makes her think he’s questioning Frank’s sanity and intelligence. Her shoulder lifts in a small shrug.

“Honestly, I’m starting to wonder if I’m his soulmate at all,” she confesses. “I think... he might not have anything left to give me.” She’s got to be the only person in history whose soulmate doesn’t reciprocate.

“Karen, the man heard your name on the news and came running,” Matt says, apparently beginning to question her sanity and intelligence, too. “He’s taken better care of you than you’ve ever taken care of yourself, all during what has to have been one of the most trying times in your life. And I know Frank — maybe not as well as you do, but enough to know he wouldn’t do that for just anyone.”

Oh, fuck, she’s going to cry. Thinking about it in Matt’s terms, she can’t help but feel a tiny spark of hope that he’s right. But if he is, then why hasn’t Frank said anything to her about it?

“Hey,” Matt says, coming around her desk to wrap his arms around her. “It’ll be okay.” She can’t stop a few tears from spilling out, but Matt’s hug is solid and comforting, and she lets herself lean on him for a minute while she pulls herself together.

“Thanks, Matt,” she whispers. Adds, “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too.” His smile is light, closer to how she remembers from the old days, before everything got so complicated between them.

Several months go by, and her life calms down a lot. She regains her emotional equilibrium, at least with regard to everything except Frank. She loves her new/old job with the law firm. She’s still running several days a week, sometimes with Frank, sometimes alone. He’s around a lot — running with her, bringing takeout or cooking her dinner, hanging out on her couch watching old movies. He brings her coffee or lunch at work a few times a week, much to Matt’s irritation and Foggy’s outright horror, until one day she looks up and realizes that he’s a firmly entrenched part of her life.

It’s not enough. But she doesn’t know how to move forward.

Frank does, though.

“We ever going to talk about it?” He says one night. They’re tangled up in each other on her couch, watching a movie, and she’s not sure she heard him correctly over the sound of Bill Murray getting slimed. He has his head pillowed on her stomach, and she can feel him chuckling against her at the antics on the screen before he looks up, one arm tightening around her waist. He’s smiling, and his hair is a mess, sticking up in ten different directions. She runs her fingers through it, tidying it slightly, though it’s a bit of a losing battle now that he’s grown it out again.

“Talk about what?” She says, smiling back.

“The soulmates thing.”

She stills in his arms, the smile melting off her face. Fuck. She’s not ready to have this conversation. “What’s to talk about? I already know Maria was yours.” That hurts to say aloud, but it hurts more when he nods, even though she was expecting it. She’s ashamed of the stab of jealousy she feels — jealous of a dead woman, not her finest moment. Oh, god, she thought she could do this, but she was wrong. She thought she’d given up hope but she held on to more of it than she’d realized. She can feel it, right now, burning to ash in her chest.

Frank is leaning over her now, shaking her gently, hands sliding up to cup her face. Damn him for being gentle right now. His tenderness is like a knife.

“Karen. _Karen_. Fuck, Karen, _look at me_.” It takes her a moment to realize he’s been saying her name for a while now. She glances up into those dark eyes. He looks scared and sad and... hopeful?

“Frank—“ She starts, having no idea what she’s going to say, but he cuts her off.

“I dreamed of you before I met you.”

She stares at him, stunned. “W-what?”

“You heard me.”

“But...” There are a lot of things she could say to that. That it’s impossible. That no one has two soulmates. But all she manages is, “How?”

“I don’t know,” he says, shaking his head. “I dreamed about Maria, too. Both of you, since I was a kid. I never knew what it meant. I thought it was some kind of cosmic fluke, or maybe two possible paths I could take, except the dreams about you didn’t stop when I met Maria.”

She blinks at him, completely overwhelmed.“How long have you known it was me?”

“I’ve always known.”

“You— Frank, what the _fuck_.”

“It was your hands,” he says, something unbelievably tender in his expression. “I always dreamt about your hands. Writing, gesturing, holding your sidearm... I knew who you were the moment you shoved that photo in my face.”

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” She whispers.

He shrugs. “You clearly didn’t know, not at first. And I was still grieving my family, I wasn’t ready for you.”

“But you’ve known for _years_ ,” she protests, and maybe she’s not being fair but she’s pissed. “You’ve been pushing me away for— and you pushed me at _Matt_! Knowing full well it would never work!”

He nods warily. “You cared about him, and he seemed like maybe a better choice than a mass murderer whose first soulmate died because of him,” he says, his grimace of distaste at the idea of Matt being a better option morphing seamlessly into pain and guilt over his wife. “And then... I was sure you knew what we are to each other, but you never said anything about it, always so careful to avoid the subject... I thought you were choosing not to accept it.”

“You absolute _moron_ ,” she says fiercely. “I’ve been choosing you for years, Frank Castle. _Years_. I thought you were so caught up in your revenge that there was no space in here for me.” She pats his chest over his heart, fingers twisting in his shirt. She yanks him closer, almost unconsciously, and his forehead is against hers, breath feathering across her lips. She pulls again and he settles down beside her, hip to hip, legs tangling.

He pulls back slightly so he can look at her, eyes fathomless in the dim light of her apartment.

“Karen, I love you,” he says, voice gravel-rough with the confession. She takes a deep breath that gusts out of her in a sob of relief.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” she chants, pulling him down and he’s kissing her, lips soft and hard, giving and demanding, all at once. She shifts against him trying to get closer, and he moves and they tumble off the edge of the couch, laughing breathlessly.

He hauls her up, her legs wrapped around his waist as he stumbles to her bedroom.

“When did you know it was me?” He asks later. They’re sitting up in bed, still naked, leaning on each other. He has her hands in his, running his fingers along hers, holding them up to his face to examine her nails and the creases in her palms, the tiny scar on the back of one hand where a fishing hook caught her when she was ten.

“The night I saw you on the roof, you remember?”

“You were the only one who looked up,” he says, a soft smile curving his lips.

“It was your skull that I always dreamed about,” she says, patting his chest so he’ll know which skull she means. “Floating in the darkness. I knew when I saw you wearing it that night. Though I was starting to suspect before then. Probably should’ve known when I saw that X-ray, but I guess I was too busy to realize.”

“You never said anything.” The same accusation she’d made earlier, but softer.

“I thought... I was terrified that you were my soulmate, but I wasn’t yours. And if I wasn’t, I didn’t want you to know you were mine.” She shakes her head ruefully. “I’ve been bursting at the seams with it for years now, wanting to tell you but trying so hard not to.”

“Is that what you meant? About fighting not to be alone?”

“I didn’t think you were listening to me back then.”

“You don’t have to fight anymore,” he says, refusing to be distracted. “You’re not alone now.”

“Neither are you.”


End file.
